PGA to merge with LIV

[Tim_Cronin]

I guess all those Golf Channel pundits who ripped LIV as immoral human rights violators will be resigning their jobs now..........

I wish. Probably not. Now they will shill for the new merger. Whores.

That's rich. Apparently, hearing and reading comprehension isn't your strongest suit. Between Chamblee, Diaz, Lerner and Lynch, all have spent the last 20+ hours speaking their mind and standing by their principles. They've reported the facts and haven't strayed into the world of appeasement, nor moral capitulation. Not a position Jay Monahan or Phil Mickelson can lay claim to.


PS.  This was, and is, an acquisition......not a merger. So many 2nd derivative issues remain to be resolved. Golf will stay on the front pages for a good long time.

This reminds me of how Formula One works. In racing, the FIA owns the F1 series and determines the rules, and U.S.-based Liberty Media owns the commercial rights, and sets the schedule, sells TV rights, sponsorships and the like under a franchise granted by the FIA, which gets a percentage of the revenue.


The New Company (maybe they'll come up with a name soon) will own the commercial rights to the PGA Tour, DP World Tour and LIV Golf. The still-existing PGA Tour Inc. will run tournaments, etc., as will the DP World (European) Tour. LIV, I'm not sure, nor am I sure if current TV rights will be transferred to the New Company, but it seems so. The Saudis (PIF) will own a chunk of it, along with PGA Tour Inc. and the Euros, and pour money in to get that chunk, percentage unannounced.


When you watch an F1 race, you see an FIA-sanctioned competition. Watch this week's Canadian Open, you'll see a PGA Tour Inc.-sanctioned competition, but, once everything is worked out, under the umbrella of New Company.


The tricky part is the foreign ownership, whether Saudis or not. Will companies working with the Tour (from TV outlets to tournament owners) have to register under the Foreign Agent Registration Act? The phrase in the act: “any of whose activities are directly or indirectly supervised, directed, controlled, financed, or subsidized in whole or in major part by a 'foreign principal.'  An individual or entity can become an “agent” even without a contractual relationship or formal agreement with a 'foreign principal.'

Lots of hoops to go through before this takes effect, I think.

[Stewart Abramson]

I think this part of an article in today's NY Times sums it up pretty accurately: 


"The merger is the latest sign that money can overwhelm almost any other force in professional sports. “The PGA Tour succumbed to the Saudis,” Brody Miller of The Athletic wrote. “In the end, Jay Monahan and the PGA Tour had a price tag.” Monahan and his fellow executives evidently decided they would rather join forces with the Saudi government than continue to bid against it for golfers.

The winners from the deal include those golfers who had left the PGA for LIV, and typically received enormous payments for having done so. Two days ago, the PGA was still treating them as traitors who were trying to ruin professional golf. Yesterday, they were welcomed back."


Link to full article    https://messaging-custom-newsletters.nytimes.com/template/oakv2?campaign_id=9&emc=edit_nn_20230607&instance_id=94422&nl=the-morning&productCode=NN®i_id=93307045&segment_id=134892&te=1&uri=nyt%3A%2F%2Fnewsletter%2Fbb6432e6-a548-53dd-8ff5-1e35ca3356c6&user_id=dce87bf08174db0af4d0c174404106ec


Even if the PGA Tour won all of the lawsuits, which I think it likely would have, that would not have been the end of LIV. LIV could continue competing with the tour and luring away big names as long as the Saudis would be willing to throw hundreds of millions of dollars at it. Rather than continuing that battle, which economically would likely not be winnable for the PGA Tour, the PGA Tour caved in to what I would guess was a crazy amount of money to in effect let the Saudis buy the tour. 




Those of you who thought Chamblee and the other talking heads would wimp out, note that have stuck to their guns and remain critical of the Saudi's, their money and this deal.

[Cliff Hamm]

This is the comment from Monahan that stood out:


"I recognize that people are going to call me a hypocrite. … I accept those criticisms. But circumstances do change."

So what chamged?...Did the regime suddenly take full responsibility for 9/11?  the Khashoggi assasination?  Commit to an immediate change in human rights.  No!  None of this was mentioned by Monahan. 

So what changed?

[Dave Doxey]

Good for golf fans.  Once again, the best players in the world will compete against each other.


Good for professionals as purses will grow.


Good for competition, as the tour can experiment with new formats and team play.


Good for the golf press.  Controversy make great stories.


Unfortunate that some Tour players feel bad because they missed an opportunity for big bucks, but they won’t starve.


Tour leadership is left looking bad, agreeing to merge after a year long PR smear campaign against LIV.

[Steve Lapper]

Even if the PGA Tour won all of the lawsuits, which I think it likely would have, that would not have been the end of LIV. LIV could continue competing with the tour and luring away big names as long as the Saudis would be willing to throw hundreds of millions of dollars at it. Rather than continuing that battle, which economically would likely not be winnable for the PGA Tour, the PGA Tour caved in to what I would guess was a crazy amount of money to in effect let the Saudis buy the tour. 




Those of you who thought Chamblee and the other talking heads would wimp out, note that have stuck to their guns and remain critical of the Saudi's, their money and this deal.

Fear, on both sides, of what litigation discovery would've revealed played a major role in incentivizing this deal. Your opinion about the PGA Tour winning such litigation is very likely incorrect. Ponte Vedra has reams of emails and texts circulating on how to foil LIV's ability to compete. Communication with network TV and other governing bodies would've made it very difficult to avoid collusion practices. I know more than few lawyers (some even peripherally involved in the actual litigation) who felt the Tour's case was rather weak and their arguments vulnerable.

[Tim_Cronin]

Antitrust is going to be a big hurdle in this. Players lose the freedom of movement that LIV briefly gave them. The new outfit is effectively a monopoly. That could bring the whole deal down.

[Steve Lapper]

Antitrust is going to be a big hurdle in this. Players lose the freedom of movement that LIV briefly gave them. The new outfit is effectively a monopoly. That could bring the whole deal down.

Couldn't agree more!!! The hurdle(s) will be plural: FTC-DOJ, US Senate, and UK regulators. Read Sen. Blumenthal's tweet about it later yesterday..


PS...If you have any doubts that proven critics are smarting from previous opinions or lacking pronounced and current  skepticism, try reading this:
https://golfweek.usatoday.com/2023/06/06/eamon-lynch-pga-tour-deal-liv-golf-saudi/?env=


or watching this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ptOmXuMwGH8

[Kalen Braley]

I'm also not sure where this 'shill' narrative is coming from.

I watched several hours of golf channel coverage yesterday and today, and there was only one guy defending the move and was roundly disagreed with and counter-pointed by everyone else on the broadcast.

I also don't think the PIF was in for the long run of big losses. Rich Lerner spoke to a contact fairly high up in the LIV org who told him going past 2023 was already looking very dodgy given the lack of corporate sponsors, viewership, and poor traction in general.

[Rob Marshall]

I think it was Lynch that said "money trumps morality".............

[John Kavanaugh]

I'm also not sure where this 'shill' narrative is coming from.

I watched several hours of golf channel coverage yesterday and today, and there was only one guy defending the move and was roundly disagreed with and counter-pointed by everyone else on the broadcast.

I also don't think the PIF was in for the long run of big losses. Rich Lerner spoke to a contact fairly high up in the LIV org who told him going past 2023 was already looking very dodgy given the lack of corporate sponsors, viewership, and poor traction in general.

You have been preaching that the LIV would fold because of money issues since day one. Give it up. You were in a big boat. Plug the hole and come to shore.


Note: This deal is doomed. Perfect political fodder to distract us during these difficult times. Cheap votes for the taking.

[Pat Burke]

If history is an indicator


Monnahan will come out and announce the deal creates higher purses across the board and most of the angry players will sit back down and nod their heads.


Gonna be tough to sell the integrity of professional golf angle, isn’t it?


I thought the golf channel was impressively opinionated given they basically exist due to pga tour events.




And what if a pissed off policy board vetoes this whole thing?  Again, monies flowing in likely temper this, but the board could say no.
Of course the independent (non player) directors will likely win out as they normally do.

[Steve_ Shaffer]

From today's NYT:
One of the few people who accurately predicted the outcome of this saga was Donald Trump, who remains close to Saudi officials and whose clubs hosted several LIV events.

“All of those golfers that remain ‘loyal’ to the very disloyal PGA,” Trump wrote in an online post last summer, “will pay a big price when the inevitable merger with LIV comes, and you get nothing but a big ‘thank you’ from PGA officials.” Now Trump stands to benefit from the merger. The PGA Tour suddenly seems more likely to hold events at his courses.

[Jim O’Kane]

The more I read media outlets, and follow the opinions here (which are more insightful), the more I think I'm back in college, summer term, watching the Iran-Contra hearings out of sheer boredom with nothing to do.

And the more I experience this deja vu feeling, I doubt most of us regular folk will ever know the half of it. It, the "truth" or "real reason(s)", will be buried in the complex web of all the legal implications that were starting to manifest.

I think the points Steve Lapper and John McSweeney made, are the logical, high level reasons, this merger has happened.

The PGA Tour absolutely had more to lose in a lawsuit than LIV.

The dirt that would come to light would be a huge blow to the PGA tour and jeopardize multi-million dollar relationships with partners and sponsors. Those relationships would be talked about in court.

LIV on the other hand? Their dirt is already known, and murder isn't going to be talked about court.

[John Kavanaugh]

https://www.pgatour.com/marketing-partners


Who will be the first sponsor to jump. Charles Schwab could start a run for the exits that would kill the deal. They don’t want to apologize for being associated with a dirty organization.

[Jake Marvin]

If this does somehow manage to complete...


Is it actually a win for golf fans?


I guess it's preferable to have all the top players together in big competitions, but personally LIV didn't detract from my enjoyment of the PGA. If a few guys go to LIV, so what, they drop off my radar. The stars of the PGA were the stars of golf even if some other guys were playing good golf somewhere else.


On the other hand, what does hamper my enjoyment of pro golf is tacitly agreeing to what's happened here and tacitly endorsing the regime behind it. Judging from the reactions from rank-and-file fans in a few comment sections with much lower golf IQs than this one, it seems like plenty of people think the same thing, at least right now.


Is it actually a win for players, long-term?


Because while the current party line seems to be more money for players, I don't see any incentive for that to continue past the completion of the merger. Once the tours are effectively merged, where's the competition to encourage it? One of the LIV attacks on the PGA was that players retained a low percentage of revenue (26% seems to have been an accusation), but with no alternative options to make serious money playing golf why would that not go back to being the case? Seems like the model could quickly shift to a UFC-type situation where all players are contracted and anyone beyond the top 20-30 players in the world are fighting for scraps (that model currently allows fighters to retain 15-20% of revenues).


I suppose if the good-hearted and innocent Saudi investment in golf proves to expand interest across the world, maybe there's more money coming in to share. Then, they haven't seemed like a rising-tide-lifts-all-boats kind of sovereign wealth fund to this point.


So, more broadly, does anyone benefit who isn't receiving a large bag of riyals in the next few months?

[Adrian_Stiff]

Good for golf fans.  Once again, the best players in the world will compete against each other.


Good for professionals as purses will grow.


Good for competition, as the tour can experiment with new formats and team play.


Good for the golf press.  Controversy make great stories.


Unfortunate that some Tour players feel bad because they missed an opportunity for big bucks, but they won’t starve.


Tour leadership is left looking bad, agreeing to merge after a year long PR smear campaign against LIV.

This is the best post of them all.

[Steve_ Shaffer]

The PGA Tour-LIV deal stunned pro golfers — and upset more than a few



https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2023/06/06/pga-tour-liv-merger-reaction

[Peter Sayegh]

Judging from the reactions from rank-and-file fans in a few comment sections with much lower golf IQs than this one, it seems like plenty of people think the same thing, at least right now.

Sucking up to this board, Jake? I'm as "rank-and-file" as there is here. I'll take MY "golf IQ" over any other poster.

As far as PROFESSIONAL golf (to paraphrase an old quote), I wouldn't watch/care about it if it happened in my driveway.

[Paul Jones]

I am guessing that PGA Tour was running into financial problems: bigger purses, legal fees, not enough sponsor (tournament and TV) help... has led to Monahan taking the money with a parachute for himself as CEO of new entity.


I am shocked he had that much power to broker the deal without any of the players involvement.

[Brian_Ewen]

So, its not LIV?

McIlroy attempted to distinguish between the PIF and LIV Golf, insisting the PGA Tour and DP World Tour had not merged with the latter. “It’s not LIV. I still hate LIV. I hope it goes away and I would fully expect that it does,” he said. “That’s where the distinction here is. This is the PGA Tour, the DP World Tour and the PIF, very different from LIV.

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2023/jun/07/i-still-hate-liv-rory-mcilroy-says-there-must-be-no-way-back-for-rebels

[Paul Jones]

PIF owns LIV - not sure how very different…

[Jake Marvin]

Judging from the reactions from rank-and-file fans in a few comment sections with much lower golf IQs than this one, it seems like plenty of people think the same thing, at least right now.

Sucking up to this board, Jake? I'm as "rank-and-file" as there is here. I'll take MY "golf IQ" over any other poster.

As far as PROFESSIONAL golf (to paraphrase an old quote), I wouldn't watch/care about it if it happened in my driveway.

I’ve met far too many people here to feel a need to suck up, which is also enough to know I’d take us over certain other wings of the golf internet on most things. 

[Steve_Lovett]

PIF owns LIV - not sure how very different…

Maybe Rory meant LIV = the format? (54 holes. No cut. Shotgun start)

[John Kavanaugh]

Rory had the face of a jilted lover. He really, really hates the LIV. That special kind of hate.

[David Kelly]

This is the comment from Monahan that stood out:


"I recognize that people are going to call me a hypocrite. … I accept those criticisms. But circumstances do change."

So what chamged?...Did the regime suddenly take full responsibility for 9/11?  the Khashoggi assasination?  Commit to an immediate change in human rights.  No!  None of this was mentioned by Monahan. 

So what changed?

The Tour started hemorrhaging sponjulics